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Watch a Jaguar F-Type R drag a parachute at 186 mph

With carbon-ceramic brakes on offer, the Jaguar F-Type R Coupe can shed off speed even faster than it can rack it up. Even the standard steel rotors do a pretty good job of it. But what would happen if you deployed a parachute out the back of the Jag at 186 miles per hour, like you might with a drag racer? That's what the British automaker has found out in this latest video. And just why would they do such a thing, you ask? Because Bloodhound, that's why. Jaguar is providing technical support to the Bloodhound SSC land speed record attempt, and one of the roles into which the F-Type has been pressed is to check the parachute that will (along with the air brakes and rotors) form an integral part of the jet- and rocket-powered vehicle's run. To make sure the chute would do its job, the team put Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green behind the wheel of the specially equipped F-Type at the RAF air base in Bentwaters, Suffolk, UK, had him speed down the runway up to the car's top speed and deploy the chute. Fortunately, as you can see from the minute-long clip, everything seemed to have gone according to plan – though we're not sure about the logic behind the assertion that if "it worked at 180, it will definitely work at a thousand miles an hour." Related Video: Jaguar F-TYPE Performs Mission Critical Parachute Deployment Test for British World Land Speed Record Challenger Bloodhound SSC 12 June 2015 - World land speed record holder Andy Green drives an F-TYPE R Coupe at top speed of 186mph to test Bloodhound SSC's parachute deployment system - The test continues Jaguar's technical partnership in the world land speed record attempt, following a high-speed communications test run in South Africa in 2014 - Jaguar will be at the heart of Bloodhound SSC providing its 5.0-litre 550PS supercharged V8 engine to power the rocket's oxidiser pump Today, Jaguar and the world land speed record holder RAF Wing Commander Andy Green performed vital high-speed parachute tests as part of the company's on-going technical support for this unique engineering adventure: creating a car that can cover a mile in just 3.6 seconds. The jet and rocket powered car, which aims to surpass the current record of 763.035mph before targeting 1000mph, has multiple braking systems including air-brakes ('doors' mounted on the side of the car which open to increase aerodynamic drag) and disc brakes (used when slowing down from 200mph).

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

Jaguar opens new engine plant in the UK

The heads of Jaguar Land Rover are having a busy couple of weeks opening factories. Just days after inaugurating the company's first overseas plant in China, the automaker's new Engine Manufacturing Center in the UK is being inaugurated, as well. The plant near Wolverhampton, England, marks the first time in decades that JLR is building its own powerplants in-house. Further signaling the importance of this launch for the business, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were on hand and even tweeted about it.
The factory's first major project is to build JLR's latest Ingenium four-cylinders, starting with the 2.0-liter diesel version. "Our new Engine Manufacturing Centre is an important step in advancing the competitiveness and capability of the UK automotive sector. The production of in-house engines will support the expansion of the UK supply chain providing critical mass for inward investment," said Trevor Leeks, plant operations director in the automaker's announcement.
Opening the doors to the Engine Manufacturing Center has been years in the making for JLR. The plant was first announced in September 2011 and broke ground in June 2012. Building it cost the company 500 million pounds ($800 million) and created 1,400 new jobs. Of course, being a state-of-the-art factory, considerations were made to make the place as energy efficient as possible. That meant installing the UK's largest solar array with 21,000 panels to produce about 30 percent of the site's electricity needs.